An attorney for a popular site under fire for not better screening adverts that push the harlotry of children promised Fri.

to guard youngsters. Sam Fifer, a Chicago attorney who represents Backpage.com, claimed his customer “looks forward to working with the attorneys general and law enforcement at every level to stop misappropriate use of the Backpage site.” That is something state officers have heard before. The Nation’s organisation of Attorneys General was unhappy with the site’s prior tries to screen the adverts and sent a humorless letter August. 31 calling the site a center for the trafficking of children. The seven-page bully pulpit letter was signed by state attorneys general from Tennessee and forty five other states, and advised the internet site to get rid of its adult services announcement section, which NAAG guesses generates more than $22 million yearly. Fifer claimed he sent a written reply to NAAG Fri. , but he did not want to release copies to the media. The state attorneys general allege they have tracked more than fifty examples, in twenty-two states over 3 years, of charges filed against those trafficking or making an attempt to traffic children on Backpage.com.

Backpage, owned by Hamlet Voice Media, is based in Phoenix and Dallas — and features free classified local advertisements on pages for over four hundred towns, including Memphis — across the U.S.

And Canada, Australia, Eire , Mexico, Britain, New Zealand and the Caribbean, according to its site. Fed prosecutors in Memphis say the local page is used to exploit children. They point to Terrence Arnett Yarbrough, 35, as a key example. He’s waiting for trial charged with prostituting twelve children and girls and finding clients through Backpage adverts, according to Fed.

court records. After an analogous campaign against Craigslist, that web site shut down its “erotic services” section in May 2009 and its “adult services” section in Aug 2010. State and Fed. officers are worried that those purchasers have shifted to Backpage, NAAG president-elect Douglas F. Gansler wrote in the letter to Backpage officers. “Traffickers who exploit runaways and other disadvantaged youngsters should not be supplied with a tool that makes peddling flesh so much easier,” recounted Gansler, Maryland’s attorney general. “The only way for Backpage.com to utterly stop kid sex trafficking on its site is to take down adult services ads altogether and take assertive steps to make certain such posts don’t appear somewhere else on the site. “.